As luck would have it, pretty Miss Freda was staying in the house, and she fell to my share.

I always liked her, though of late I had felt rather angry with her for being carried away by the general storm of admiration and swept by it into an engagement with Lawrence Vaughan.

She was a very pleasant, natural sort of talker, and she always treated me as an old friend.

But she seemed to me, that night, a little less satisfied than usual with life.

Perhaps it was merely the effect of the black lace dress which she wore, but I fancied her paler and thinner, and somehow she seemed all eyes.
"Where is Lawrence now ?" I asked, as we went down to the dining-room.
"He is stationed at Dover," she replied.